Wife files to divorce estranged husband

Rosario DiGirolamo -- the man under police scrutiny as a "person of interest" in the unsolved June disappearance of his Hightstown mistress and charged in the abandonment of the baby boy born of that affair -- has a new issue to contend with: His wife wants a divorce.

DiGirolamo's wife, Maria DiMaggio, filed for divorce Wednesday in the Monmouth County family division of New Jersey Superior Court, a court official told The Times in response to an inquiry late Friday.

Details of the filing were not immediately available Friday.

However, a newly released court document out of Delaware -- an arrest warrant affidavit issued June 26 against DiGirolamo for child abandonment and endangerment charges -- indicates that DiMaggio told investigators her husband had a significant financial motive to hold on to his marriage and keep his affair and son with 27-year-old Amy Giordano a secret from his wife and others.

In fact, according to the affidavit of Delaware State Police Detective Mary Bartkowski, "none of Rosario's friends or family was aware that he had a mistress and a child by same. Rosario's wife advised that his parents live in New York and own several businesses and property and (DiGirolamo) was expecting a large settlement upon his parents' deaths.

DiGirolamo's parents are very old-fashioned Italians and "if Rosario had left her and the child she has by him, that his family may disown him and he would lose out on the inheritance," according to Bartkowski's statement.

Authorities have said DiMaggio did not know about Giordano -- her husband's mistress -- or Michael S. DiGirolamo, his 1-year-old son with the Hightstown woman, until after the then-mystery baby was found abandoned but unharmed in the parking lot of a Newark, Del., hospital June 9.